"My grandmother's house after she passed away. Every corner was filled with her life; the piano, her photo albums, her books, her handwriting... A place for everything and everything in its place."
– Clarisse D’Arcimoles
Family Photography Now, directive and week 38: Is there a photo or object that resonates with your childhood? Show us what it means to you now.
"I look back to my younger self and attempt to recapture my childhood nature through my assuming adult eyes. I remember childhood stories of fairy tales, C.S. Lewis and Enid Blyton, which I would imagine happening at particular trees or parts of the woods around the house. Now, as an adult, when I wander the woodland, all that magic is still there. The home involuntarily transports me back to the past, and I repeatedly choose to return. In some ways I see this as an uncomfortable comfort blanket, in that it can make things feel static and distance me from the present.
We are a family of hoarders, where items are kept as a way of clinging on to the past. Billowing boxes fill many rooms, shelves are filled, and stuff is precariously placed on top of stuff. First pairs of shoes, greetings cards, family photographs, clothes, heirlooms and gifts produce the feeling of a museum of our own pasts. Beyond this, the home is a merging of my parents, my sisters and myself. It’s a place where all our biographies entwine, and is manifested in the objects and space."
— Jonny Briggs, artist